Opening shots stop `monkey' business

3-run 1st inning helps road-tested Yankees grab home-field edge

Yankees 4, Angels 2

ANAHEIM — Alex Rodriguez recently suggested the New York Yankees and Boston are destined to meet again, a scenario Fox TV executives no doubt are drooling over.

"I think it's inevitable," Rodriguez said. "We know that to get where we want to go, we need to go through the Red Sox. And I think the Red Sox know that for them to go where they want to go, they need to go through us."

The White Sox may have other ideas, but the Yankees did their part Tuesday night to get back to the American League Championship Series, knocking off the Los Angeles Angels 4-2 in their AL Division Series opener.

"Tonight means nothing unless we win [Wednesday]," Derek Jeter said.

The Yankees snatched the home-field advantage in the series as they smacked around Cy Young Award favorite Bartolo Colon, the Angels' only dominating starter.

Colon gave up four straight two-out hits in New York's three-run first inning and Mike Mussina shut out the Angels over 5 2/3 innings to earn the victory.

"We are not intimidated on the road," Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "These guys, it's like they know they have a job to do and they're going to give it every effort they can."

The Angel Stadium crowd of 45,142 was lifeless after the three-run first, with the brief exception of a scoreboard cameo by the rally monkey in the eighth. But like an aging sitcom at the end of its run, the rally monkey appears to have jumped the shark.

No rally. Little noise.

"On the road it's imperative to come out and work with a lead," Rodriguez said. "Against a team like Anaheim, which does such a great job of running and bunting, it's important to minimize that and take [the crowd] out of the game a little."

Garrett Anderson, Vladimir Guerrero and Darin Erstad, the heart of the Angels order, combined to go 2-for-11 with no extra-base hits.

A sense of deja vu slowly is creeping over the O.C., where the Angels have lost three straight home playoff games over the last two seasons.

"It was not by design then, and it's not by design now," Los Angeles manager Mike Scioscia said.

The Angels also had the home-field advantage over Boston in last year's division series before getting swept in three games. Rookie Chien-Ming Wang will face Angels right-hander John Lackey in Game 2 Wednesday before the series heads to New York, where the Yankees have a 53-28 record.

"They're not young anymore," Jeter said of Wang and rookie second baseman Robinson Cano. "We've been through a lot this year, so you can forget about their ages."

While the White Sox were trouncing the Red Sox on Tuesday afternoon in Chicago, the Yankees were getting ready for their game with no thoughts about a possible rematch against their longtime rivals.

"If you decide, say, from Day 1, which teams you want to play, it usually bites you in the rear end," Torre said beforehand.

With eight straight division titles, the Yankees are too savvy to begin looking ahead. But on a team with so many playoff-ready veterans, it was a rookie who gave them a jump start.

After retiring the first two batters he faced, Colon gave up three straight singles to load the bases for Cano, who delivered a two-strike, bases-clearing double over the head of Anderson.

"That was huge for us," Torre said. "That got us off on the right foot."

Anderson was playing so shallow he watched the ball fall a few feet shy of the warning track in left. Scioscia explained that with two strikes, "Garrett was pinching in a little to take the single away."

The Yankees put together another two-out rally in the second, with Jason Giambi's run-scoring double making it 4-0. Mussina's sterling effort was the difference.

"That was the biggest question on everybody's mind, how Moose was going to go out there," Giambi said. "He was outstanding."